


this oath in our hands

by eonflute



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Developing Relationship, M/M, Relationship Study, also implied ritsuizu, implied past izuleo, marginally better communication than canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24157813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eonflute/pseuds/eonflute
Summary: Tsukasa Suou may be new to Knights, but he can't see them fall. Nor can he ignore the strange tempest of a boy that is their wayward leader.Wherein Knights is a rock band, but fundamentally they are still the same.
Relationships: Suou Tsukasa/Tsukinaga Leo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	this oath in our hands

**Author's Note:**

> this fic warrants a bit of prefacing!
> 
> i wrote this for class at a point where i was otherwise struggling with writer's block. knights was the only thing i could write about, so i played very loose with canon and purposefully made it an au so i could take more liberties & add some of my own exp with bands, which made it easier to later change names and settings so that i could submit it without getting points docked for. you know. fanfic.
> 
> also because we do peer revisions i glossed over the actual event stories and made some basically nonexistent. i could not let my wonderful group members read like 50 pages of high school band drama.

He raises a hand up towards the ceiling light, as if to block its glare, studying the skin on the back of his hand. Idioms have never sounded so meaningless. What is it, to know the back of your hand? It’s incomprehensible to Tsukasa now; he has never felt so disparate from a part of his own body.

He looks to his nails, thin slivers peeking over his fingertips and translucent under the light. Not so long ago, the thought of long nails was absurd to him, always so efficient keeping them in line with his blunted canines. Dentists had never been able to wean him off of it.

Leo, it seems, is a better remedy for nervous habits than any trick the family dentist could ever give him.

Tsukasa blinks, watching dust motes cross the gap between his eyes and his arm. Some settle into the embrace of his eyelashes. It could be late afternoon, the weight of the air, the silence of his room, the dim yellow of the ceiling light—the atmosphere feels right for yearning. It’s two in the morning.

Just to confirm, Tsukasa turns to peek at his nightstand again. 2:12 a.m., it corrects him.

He lets out a long, heavy breath, and brings the back of his hand down to meet his lips. 

_Indirect kiss,_ the dust motes tease.

* * *

In the waning summer of the year past, Tsukasa met a mad genius.

Sprawled on the floor, smack in the middle of the hallway, was a bright-eyed and bright-haired boy, scribbling so furiously on his papers that he seemed not to notice when his marker—he wrote with a _marker_ , how could he stand the weight of the ink?—scuffed onto the floor and left a thick black stain on the linoleum.

“I—excuse me,” Tsukasa said. “What are you—”

“Ugh. He’s back.”

Enter stage left: three more teens, all Tsukasa’s senior, only these were ones he knew. And they seemed to know the little composer taking up the hallway, too. They formed a little semi-circle, looking for all the world like they owned the music department and the whole damn school on top of it.

“You…you guys know this…um…”

“Human disaster? You could say so.” That would be Izumi—he stood with his hips cocked, eyes narrowed and expression reminiscent of a snake about to strike. Nothing out of the ordinary there. “He’s our little missing leader, if you’d like to put it that way.”

Tsukasa blinked at him. Of course he knew, objectively, that these three hadn’t been the whole of their little clique; who didn’t know about Leo, musical prodigy, more storm than boy, eccentric frontman of Knights? Who didn’t know about the school’s most proficient hooky player, so talented that he’d been assumed a dropout months ago, long before Tsukasa had the chance to join?

He’d never met the guy, obviously. Come the first day of Tsukasa’s sophomore year, the band had pinned up large posters on every bulletin board advertising their free frontman position, and after all that time daydreaming wistfully about joining Knights—they’d like a backup vocalist, anything to get him involved in music beyond his rotting violin—he’d finally learned that sometimes things changed, and people left, and all the ones who remained could do was save face by acting like they’d never needed their wayward leader anyways.

Or they tried, anyways. It was clear in Izumi’s face, as it had been every time they brushed the side of the subject, that he had trouble looking at Leo properly. Ritsu saw it too; he saw most things, and better than the rest of them.

“Welcome back, Ou-sama,” he said in that whispery, melodic voice of his. “How was your abduction by aliens?”

“Hm? Oh, it was fantastic!” Leo exclaimed, hopping to his feet. He did so with a flourish of his arms that sent his papers scattering, though he seemed not to notice. “Been a while, Rittsu! And Sena, and Naru, and…” He paused, his grin turning to a muddled frown. “Do I know this one?”

“You don’t.” Arashi spoke up now, maintaining excellent composure in the face of this human hurricane. “He’s our beloved little newbie. We couldn’t exactly keep up performances without our frontman, could we? So we recruited him!” She laid a hand atop Tsukasa’s head, ruffling his hair.

“I—Narukami-senpai, _hey_ —um, hi. I’m Tsukasa.”

Leo gave him a long, scrutinizing look, and said nothing.

“Tsukasa Suou. I…um, I really like your work. With Knights. I wanted to join, to, well, get to know you, but that obviously didn’t work out. I guess now it’s going to, though? Are you back for good?”

Still, Leo said nothing. He tucked his marker behind his ear, miraculously keeping it there despite its chunkiness, and turned to start collecting his papers in a methodical manner that seemed so at odds with how he’d only just scattered them apart.

“Ou-sama, don’t you have anything to say to our little Suu-chan?” Ritsu prompted. He rested an elbow on Izumi’s shoulder; Izumi looked briefly as if he wanted to bat it away, but he was obviously more preoccupied with sorting out what to spit vitriolically at Leo, as he proceeded to do then.

“So you’re just waltzing back in, are you? Like nothing’s happened? Like you didn’t leave us for _months_?” His glare had sharpened. Tsukasa knew there must be something there, some sort of tension between these two—and Ritsu and Arashi knew just as well, or better, even, because Arashi gently detached Ritsu’s elbow from its perch, and he didn’t even complain.

“Ah, what a welcome party this is!” Leo trilled. Was he even processing Izumi’s words? His bite? It was impossible to tell. “But, Sena, unfortunately you’ll have to put your little vent on hold.” He brandished his stack of reassembled sheets; some of them were scribbled with music composition, but beneath those, Tsukasa caught a glimpse of…school forms?

“What—don’t brush me off like that! This is serious, Ou-sama!”

“Of course, of course,” Leo said. “But it doesn’t matter! Because you guys are gonna disband for me!”

The hall fell into a stiff silence.

“ _Pardon?_ ”

✩

And so had begun Tsukasa and Leo’s elaborate dance around each other.

Leo, as the band’s leader, technically couldn’t disband the group without majority consent. But that wasn’t what worried them. The problem was that they wouldn’t have stayed together at all if not for Leo. He was their composer, their frontman, the head of the band. Knights had barely kept itself afloat this year; his upperclassmen didn’t talk about it when he was around, but Tsukasa wasn’t stupid. He’d never been able to so much as see a Knights performance last year, even though they’d played practically every Wednesday on campus and at least once a month on some venue that seemed way out of a high school rock band’s league. Now they were lucky to score more than one per month.

Whenever Tsukasa tried to probe the subject of Leo, just to see if it wasn’t impossible to talk him back, Izumi shut him down in an instant, if he responded at all. If not, Arashi would rest a warning hand on his shoulder, or Ritsu pressed his chilly palm over Tsukasa’s mouth.

There was no talking about it, it seemed. Only conflict. Fans wanted Leo. They couldn’t survive if he didn’t come back.

And so they compromised: Leo would return, but only if they could beat his own temporary group in a battle-of-the-bands style performance. If not, then he was done.

“We can’t let him win. We can’t!” Tsukasa said. They were one of the orchestra practice rooms, where the drums obviously didn’t belong and took up way too much space. Leo’s mystery team had already taken the only room set up for proper rock bands.

“Obviously,” Ritsu said.

“Yeah, but, Tsukasa-chan,” Arashi added, “do you think you could stop pacing? You’re making _me_ anxious. I don’t really do anxious.”

Tsukasa froze mid-pace. “Sorry, Narukami-senpai. But I joined to _perform_. I can’t lose this so soon after I’ve gotten it, even if it’s to the person who I wanted to meet most! You don’t understand how much is at stake for me—if this ends, then I’ll never—”

“Great enthusiasm,” Izumi said from the corner of the room, crossing his legs. “Let’s put that into our rehearsal instead of pacing, hm?”

Tsukasa nodded, swallowing thickly. “Of course, Sena-senpai.”

That night, they rehearsed longer than they ever had before. Nobody interfered with Knights rehearsals, no matter how far they’d fallen from grace; it was long, long past midnight when they finally shuffled out of the practice room.

✩

Leo hadn’t succeeded, in the end. He was a compositional genius, and he’d cobbled together the perfect group to face off against Knights, but miraculously, Knights _won._

Perhaps it wasn’t fair to call it a miracle. Leo had three former members of highly skilled bands on his side, but Knights had the benefit of name recognition and months spent trying their hardest to remain alive. Everything was at stake, and Tsukasa had never put so much of his soul into playing. He was tense, he was sweating, his fingers hurt, and he refused to give up.

At the end of their last song, he looked up to meet Leo’s eyes. They were wide, transfixed on him, burning right through his soul.

There was a moment—two moments—

The crowd burst into cheers. Louder, more powerful cheers than Tsukasa had ever heard before. Even more than they’d cheered for Leo’s group.

And he took his loss: grinning, gleaming, in front of an audience, and Tsukasa had the metaphorical sword to his throat.

“I yield, newbie,” he said, wild-eyed and, if Tsukasa squinted, perhaps even _impressed_.

Something bloomed in Tsukasa’s chest. He liked this. Leo’s acknowledgement, his concession, his _respect_. He liked it, and he wanted more.

✩

In the days that followed their showdown, Leo began turning up to school again. People eyed him strangely in the halls, particularly the underclassmen. It was hard not to; he broke out his beat-up notebook to scratch down compositions whenever the mood struck him, and his favored writing surfaces were lockers and floors. People who knew him didn’t react much beyond a slight scowl and a huff—okay, maybe Tsukasa had mainly been watching Izumi’s reactions to their leader traipsing around school. The other two took it in stride, and so did Leo’s other…friends? Acquaintances? Actually, it was impossible to tell. He flung himself excitedly and openly at anyone whose name he knew, and even some who he didn’t.

But people seemed to expect this grandiosity from Leo. He stood in the halls muttering about the spark of inspiration, and he proclaimed himself a genius whenever he sketched out a full musical phrase.

He came to practice too, now, and balance was restored. Izumi was once again the backing vocalist and lead guitar; Ritsu no longer had to back, and could focus strictly on bass; Arashi’s position as drummer was unchanged as ever. And Tsukasa…well, he’d already been rhythm guitar, but he’d never done the backing vocals before. Not until Leo stared him down on one late evening, when they were still rehearsing in the cramped little dimly lit closet their school had deemed a jam room, and declared:

“Newbie, you’re joining Sena for backup vocals.”

Tsukasa blinked.

“You hear me?”

“I, uh…yes, but…excuse me? I’ve never done backing vocals before.”

Leo gave him a loaded look, some mixture of bewilderment and smugness that Tsukasa hadn’t even known the human face could produce. “Your voice had to clear Sena’s bar for the audition, yeah? Then you’re good enough to do backing vocals. It’d be a shame just to leave you on rhythm this whole time—our fans deserve to hear our little newbie’s voice! I’ll add a whole new layer to this harmony!”

“Would you please stop calling me ‘newbie?’” Tsukasa groaned. “I do have a name, you know.”

“Right, right, it’s…Su…Suo. Hah! I got it!”

“Don’t worry about it, Suu-chan,” Ritsu interjected. “He’s a bit stupid, but our king does know what he’s talking about when it comes to music. If he thinks it’ll be better with you backing, then it will be.”

“What about you, Ritsu-senpai?” Tsukasa asked. “You’ve done it much more than me. You’ve been doing it since I joined!”

“Mmm. Not interested.”

“I—what?”

Leo squeezed his way back into focus. “Alright, alright, enough chattering, you guys! I said what I said.” He turned to Tsukasa, and suddenly his impenetrable, goofy face became serious. “Suo. I think you can do this. You’re only here because I was away, and now that I’m back, you’re still not going anywhere. Not just anyone can fill my spot—these guys know it.”

Tsukasa felt something tightening in his throat. He fought to swallow around it. _Not the time, not the time._

“Will you do it?” Leo’s eyes, fiercely green, the wash of the grass in a summer heatwave, burned into Tsukasa’s very being.

Tsukasa held his breath.

Then he nodded.

“I’ll do it, Leader.”

✩

Tsukasa could not for the life of him get a read on their leader.

Some days Leo drove him utterly up the wall. He composed songs with maniacal glee, which might have been helpful if inspiration didn’t befall him most often in the middle of class hours or rehearsal times. He’d shoot up in the middle of a jam session, spouting nonsense about it—whatever “it” was—finally hitting him, and scribbled down notations until he ran out of paper, at which point the walls became his next target. Suffice to say, the rest of the band spent plenty of time wrangling their eccentric leader back to focus. Why they put up with it was bizarre. How they’d even come to know this guy was beyond him.

Tsukasa said as much to Izumi after rehearsal in the blossoming cold of early December. 

His parents were both off on business, and he couldn’t drive, and just as he was beginning to dial someone to come pick him up from rehearsal Izumi had settled a hand on his phone.

“I brought my spare helmet today. I’ll take you home.”

He’d said it in that sharp, guarded way of his, the way he always said things that would otherwise be too soft coming out of his mouth.

And so it was that Tsukasa found himself at a gas station while Izumi refilled his motorcycle and grumbled about forgetting to check earlier that morning.

“Sena-senpai. Not to be rude, but how is it that you guys ended up so close to Leader? I still barely know a thing about him. He’s just so…much.”

“Ugh, don’t make me start,” Izumi muttered. “I’ve known the guy for three and a half years now, and I still don’t know.”

“Really?”

Izumi narrowed his eyes at Tsukasa. Then, as the nozzle unlocked and he gently removed it from his sleek weapon of a motorcycle, he said, much softer, “No, not really. I mean, he’s an idiot, but I guess that’s why we all stick around him. He’s been around too many people who didn’t make an effort to understand him. Me included.” Izumi shoved his helmet back on, and nodded for Tsukasa to do the same. “I let him down last year. I’m not doing the same thing again.”

Tsukasa didn’t bring it up again for the rest of the ride home, and when they arrived at the pristine driveway of his cold, ornate, empty house, he thanked Izumi profusely for driving him home.

“Get a bus pass already, kid,” Izumi said. Then he drove away, into the December chill, out of sight.

✩

“Hey, kiddo.” Ritsu’s gentle voice sounded far too close to his ear for comfort.

“Wha—Ritsu-senpai?! Please don’t sneak up on me like that!” Tsukasa startled, scooting himself away from the beat-up arm of the jam room’s decades-old couch.

Ritsu didn’t seem to pay his shock any mind. He deposited himself on the couch in a ragdolled manner, turning his head to face Tsukasa again. “Secchan mentioned your little conversation from last week.”

“He…did? He always seems so private about everything.”

“Oh, he is. I’m just very good at coaxing things out of him.” Ritsu lifted his hand, swaying it back and forth as if conducting some unseen melody of inconsistent meter and indecipherable tempo. “Don’t tell him I told you that, though.”

“O-of course not,” Tsukasa said. He studied Ritsu for a moment. “You’re much earlier to practice than normal. Did you want to talk about something?”

“Mm,” Ritsu said—sighed? It was difficult to categorize the sing-songy noises he made. “See, if you’re prying at Secchan, I know it’s only a matter of time before you talk to Ou-sama directly. Not that I didn’t expect this to happen sooner or later.”

“Huh?”

“You’re a curious kid. Don’t know how we managed to keep things from you for so long, but it wasn’t really our place to tell you. I still don’t think it’s much of mine.” Ritsu narrowed his eyes. “Secchan and Ou-sama’s history is too complicated, though. So let’s not approach him again with that, alright?”

“Then…what, should I ask Narukami-senpai?”

“It’s even less her place. Just give it time, Suu-chan. If our king tells you, he tells you.”

✩

Two days before they were scheduled to perform for the city’s Christmas concert—and what a joy it was just to think of it, to know the extent of their popularity—Leo pummeled Tsukasa square in the side with a snowball.

“I—Leader! No fair!”

“There’s no such thing as fair in love and war, Suo!” Leo called out joyfully. He made to accentuate his point by scooping up another handful of snow from the ground of the school courtyard.

“I don’t think that’s correct, Leader.” Tsukasa frowned, crouching into a defensive huddle.

“You and your correctness. Live a little! Who cares if you mess up your words!” Leo flung another snowball; this time Tsukasa was prepared, and he swerved to the side to narrowly escape its trajectory. “Words aren’t what make the world go ’round, kiddo. It’s music!”

“You are _literally_ incomprehensible.”

Leo grinned at him. “Ah, of course I am. How can a genius possibly be expected to communicate on the level of the common folk?”

Tsukasa paused.

_He’s been around too many people who didn’t make an effort to understand him._

“Leader. Pardon me, but…doesn’t that bother you?”

“Huh?” Leo cocked his head.

“When people can’t understand you. Communication is the basis of being a person, isn’t it? But you’re so carefree, and wild, and…and you speak so _bizarrely_. That makes it hard to communicate with other people, right? Doesn’t it get lonely?”

Leo was quiet for a moment. And then, slowly, his face softened out of its usual wildness.

“Maybe it does,” he said. “Or maybe it did? Huh. I’ve had Sena and Rittsu and Naru around for a while now, and they’ve always seemed to understand me a whole lot better than some people.”

Was Leo…opening up?

“‘Some people?’” Tsukasa prodded.

“Nosy little kid, aren’tcha?” Leo laughed.

“I—listen, Leader. The whole reason I wanted to join this band was because I admired your music, and you weren’t even _there_ when I joined.”

“If I had been there, there wouldn’t have been a vacancy.”

“Who cares! The point is that now I’m a member of your band, and God, you’re an incredible composer. But why did you _leave?_ What happened to you guys last year?”

Leo blinked. “They didn’t tell you?”

“I…no…that is, I never felt it was appropriate to ask, you see,” Tsukasa said. “If you came up in conversation, one of them would always get this faraway look in their eyes—”

“So, Sena.”

“…Yes.”

“I see, I see.” Leo plunked himself down right into the snow, without a care in the world for his pants, it seemed. “Well, if you want the rundown that bad, I don’t mind giving it to you. You know I used to compose for most bands on campus, right?”

“Um. No?”

“Hah! Of course you don’t. It never really mattered to them that they were getting their music from a human being, y’know? When you compose day and night, it’s easy for people to rationalize that using your stuff is their right or something. Never did get credited for those compositions. Not even a shoutout before playing.” Leo kicked up his feet, sending snow spraying every which-way. “I mean, I really didn’t care much at first. But, you know, high school kids can be real mean when they want. And super stupid, too. When they got tired of doing covers, it was always ‘hey, Leo, make us a new song! We wanna stand out!’ And I did it!

“But, y’know. They weren’t my friends. I didn’t really have friends until I met Sena. He’s how I met Rittsu and Naru—he’s the one who actually pulled the group together. But he’s too worked in on himself to be the leader, and he told me the rest of the group would be at their best supporting me, anyways. Dunno what his reasoning was, but it seemed to work out!”

“Then…why did you leave school for so long?” Tsukasa asked. The cold was beginning to seep through his down coat, but Leo seemed perfectly content sitting in the snow, and Tsukasa worried about budging him when he was already divulging more than ever before.

“Sometimes your creativity burns out, y’know? And when that happens everyone who came to you and offered you their weird fake friendship gives up on you. And then things get bad. I mean, of course, Sena and everyone tried to help me, even though I pretty much dumped him, but eventually I just…stopped being able to leave the house. 

“I didn’t think they’d actually keep going without me, if I’m being honest. I thought if I left, the band would just collapse in on itself. Those three are all kinda disasters in their own ways, if you know what I mean. So coming back to see them with this bright-eyed new kid in their ranks…that was pretty wild, y’know? It excited me.”

Tsukasa inhaled slowly, the sharp cold of the air puncturing his lungs. “Leader…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry…”

“Huh? Nah, it’s fine. Everyone else already knows! You’re a member of the team, now, so why shouldn’t you?”

“Well, it’s hardly my business…”

“Of course it is!” As if he’d never been in that quiet, contemplative state, Leo leapt right to his feet and poked Tsukasa square in the nose. “You’re a member of Knights! It’s our business to know how everyone else is doing, yeah? We can’t perform at our best if we’re not in sync.” He moved his hand to clasp Tsukasa’s. “You know my deal now, and that means you’re gonna kick ass at our concert this weekend.”

“Of course.” Tsukasa couldn’t think of any other response.

Leo frowned. “Something you wanna say, newbie?”

“Do you have to keep—nevermind. It doesn’t matter.” Tsukasa breathed slowly. “It doesn’t seem right for you to air all that if I don’t explain myself, is all. You deserve to know as much about me as I do about you.”

“I mean, I told you because I _wanted_ to. You don’t need to say anything.”

“But I do!” Tsukasa cried, then caught himself. “It’s…it’s nothing big. But I have to tell you that Knights changed my life. The first time I heard you performing, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my future. I never did get the opportunity to go to your shows last year, but I _heard_ you guys. Joining this band is the one thing I’ve done in my life that I chose entirely by myself. That’s why I couldn’t let you disband us. That’s why I fought so hard at the battle.…”

At that, Leo broke into a bright grin.

“I see it now! That’s the dedication you showed when you faced off against me. And that’s why I know you’re gonna kick ass at the concert on Saturday.” He ruffled one of his gloved, snow-covered hands in Tsukasa’s hair. “But I gotta go to class now, Suo, and you do too! I’ll see you at practice.”

And Leo sprinted off, kicking up a trail of snow behind him, all while Tsukasa watched his retreating back.

Incomprehensibly, he found himself wanting to reach out, to touch that back, to follow.

✩

The year trudged on, and Leo grew brighter, somehow. Tsukasa felt occasional pangs of anxiety still, but everytime he did Leo seemed to be more encouraging, more enthusiastic, more sure of him. He wasn’t sure how, but that sureness made him sure of himself, too.

And then, of course, there was the big question of the spring semester: what would happen to the band next year?

With Izumi and Leo graduating, one of the others was bound to take up the frontman role. It didn’t seem like Ritsu or Arashi were particularly invested in who ended up taking the spot, but both of them had their merits. Arashi was lively, loving, welcoming; Ritsu was observant and had known Izumi and Leo longer. Tsukasa saw Leo pull both of them aside several times over the course of February, now that he was making real college plans and had confirmed he wouldn’t be held back. Who’d have thought?

It wasn’t until the second week of March that Tsukasa got to hear Leo’s verdict.

He was pulled aside, just as Ritsu and Arashi had been, in the dusky evening after rehearsal, the sky blushing in its last moments before the sun disappeared.

“Suo,” he said, far more sober than Tsukasa had seen before, even after that winter day in the courtyard.

“Yes, Leader? Something you need from me?” Tsukasa asked.

“Yeah.” Leo shuffled a bit from one foot to the other. “Listen. I’ve talked it over with Sena and Rittsu and Naru, and I’ve decided who’ll be the new frontman of the band.”

Tsukasa nodded. “Yes? I thought you were going to announce it on Friday.”

“Well, I was. But there was still one opinion I hadn’t consulted.” Leo met his eyes, those same burning green eyes that Tsukasa had felt pierce him time and again. He looked into them now, and saw tenderness.

“Suo. Do you want to be the next leader of Knights?”

What.

What?

“ _What?_ ” Tsukasa blurted. “Leader, what does that—I’m only a first-year! I thought it was going to be Narukami-senpai, surely, if not Ritsu—”

“Listen, Suo.” Leo brushed his messy bangs back, looking more like a high school boy than ever before. “Naru and Ritsu are talented, obviously, and I know they love the band. But they’ve always been supporters. I kept talking to them over the past month, just to make sure they’d be okay with it, and they never had anything but confidence in you.”

He raised a hand to Tsukasa’s cheek. “You have _drive_ , Suo. You love the band too, but you also see a future for yourself in this. You chose to come to it and stay with it even when I wasn’t there. And you chose to defend it even when it meant facing me.”

Finally, that hand drifted down to hold Tsukasa’s own. “If you truly don’t want to lead, you don’t have to. But I know what I saw in your eyes when we competed on that stage. I know you have it in you, just like you had those backing vocals. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

“I…Leader…” Tsukasa whispered, afraid his voice would crack with anymore effort. “I’ll…I have to think about it. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m not sure if I have it in me to lead.”

“Okay.” Leo shifted his clasp on Tsukasa’s hand to something looser, more gentle, and—

He raised it to his lips.

Tsukasa’s ears filled with static, and his heart accelerated. What was this? Was this real? Had he somehow died?

“Then I’ll wait for you to answer.”

* * *

2:20 a.m., and still sleep is nowhere to be found.

Perhaps it might help for Tsukasa to turn off the ceiling light, but he feels as though he’ll lose himself in the dark. He needs the light here to ground him, to remind him he is real. That what he remembers is real.

_Can I be the new leader?_ he wonders. _Leader believes in me, but do I really have what it takes?_

He traces the veins of the hand that Leo kissed. 

Knights _is_ everything to him. Maybe he’s not used to being a frontman yet, maybe he’s not sure how to lead. But had Leo been, either, when he started? Doesn’t everything have to start somewhere?

Tsukasa reaches to his nightstand to pick up his phone, and begins to compose his response.

**Author's Note:**

> big big BIG thank yous to both [emi](https://twitter.com/kuumakun) and [kye](https://twitter.com/STORMLlGHT) for proofreading this for me before i submitted it for class!!! i really can't thank both of them enough for their assistance like i don't know what i would've done without them. i love u both so much
> 
> this is also the fic that got my professor to note my "hand motif". it's the best and worst comment i've ever received. i'm never writing the word hand ever again.
> 
> here's my [twitter](https://twitter.com/ironicblu) PLEASE come hit me up about loks i love them


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